There is a free lookup on the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries website that will tell you more about a remodeling company in ten minutes than a week of reading reviews will. It is called Verify a Contractor, and every homeowner in this state should run it on every firm they are considering, including us.
What comes back is a short public record: whether the business is registered, whether its bond is active, whether its liability insurance is in force, whether it carries workers’ compensation coverage, how long it has been operating under that name, and whether anyone has filed a lawsuit against its bond. That record is the foundation of the entire conversation. Everything else — portfolio, reviews, chemistry in the first meeting — sits on top of it.
What does contractor registration in Washington actually mean?
Less than most people assume, and it is worth being precise about this.
Washington requires construction contractors to register with L&I before they can advertise or perform work. To register, a business has to obtain a state business identifier, post a surety bond, and carry general liability insurance. Registration is issued as either general or specialty, and it comes with a registration number that must appear on advertising and contracts.
Here is the part that surprises people: general contractor registration in this state is not a competency exam. Nobody tests whether the person can frame a wall, sequence a bathroom, or read a structural drawing. Registration means the business has filed the paperwork and carries the required financial protections. It is a floor, not a recommendation.
Certain trades are different. Electricians and plumbers hold their own state licenses and certifications, and those are verifiable through the same L&I system. In Seattle, the electrical work in your remodel is permitted and inspected through the city as well, which adds a second set of eyes that has nothing to do with who you hired.
So treat registration as a hard requirement and nothing more. An unregistered contractor is an immediate no. A registered one has cleared the bar the state sets — which is the beginning of your evaluation, not the end of it.
What does the bond protect you from, and what does it not?
The surety bond is the most misunderstood item on the list. It is not insurance for your project, and it is not a guarantee that work will be completed.
A bond is a limited pool of money that a homeowner, an employee, a supplier or a subcontractor can make a claim against if the contractor fails to meet their obligations. Making that claim is a legal process — in practice it generally requires taking the contractor to court and winning, then collecting against the bond. There is also a filing deadline tied to when the work was performed, and it is shorter than most people expect.
Three things follow from that, and they matter:
- The bond is a fixed amount, not a percentage of your job. On a full kitchen or whole-home remodel, it is a small fraction of what you have at stake.
- If a contractor fails, everyone owed money comes at the same pool, and state law sets the order in which claims are paid. Homeowners are not automatically first in line.
- A claim is a lawsuit, with the time and cost that implies.
None of that means the bond is worthless. What it means is that the bond is a backstop for a disaster, not a substitute for hiring carefully. The far more useful signal on the record is whether anyone has already sued against this contractor’s bond — that history is visible in the lookup, and it tells you something a portfolio never will.
What is general liability insurance covering, exactly?
Damage the contractor causes to people and property that is not the work itself. A dropped beam through your floor, a burst supply line, an injured visitor. It is real protection and it is the reason no one should be working in your house without it.
What it typically does not cover is defective workmanship — the tile that was set over inadequate waterproofing, the cabinet run that was installed out of level. Those are contract issues between you and the firm, not insurance claims. It also will not pay to finish a job someone walked away from.
Two practical notes. First, insurance can lapse. The lookup shows a policy status and dates, and a policy that was active when the firm first talked to you may not be active in month three of a long project. Second, ask for a certificate of insurance issued directly from the insurer or broker to you. Any legitimate firm will produce one without hesitation, and it takes them about a phone call.
Why does workers’ compensation matter to a homeowner?
Because in Washington, workers’ compensation coverage runs through the state fund at L&I, and if a worker is hurt on your property and is not covered, the exposure does not simply evaporate. A contractor with employees should have an active L&I account, and the lookup shows whether they do and roughly how many workers they report.
That last detail is quietly informative for another reason. A firm that reports no employees at all is running entirely on subcontractors, which is a legitimate model but a different one — it means the people in your house each week are working for someone other than the company you signed with. Worth knowing. Worth asking about.
What else is on the record worth reading?
A few things people skip past:
- How long the registration has been continuously active, and whether the same principals have registered under earlier business names. A record of dissolving and re-registering after problems is visible if you look.
- Infractions and citations, which L&I records against the business.
- The registration type. A specialty registration is not the same as a general one, and it matters for a project that spans multiple trades.
While you are at it, look up the address itself. The City of Seattle’s permit records are public and searchable, and in older neighborhoods they will often show you what has been permitted at your house over the decades — additions, electrical upgrades, a bathroom that was legally converted and one that was not. In a 1920s Ballard or Wedgwood bungalow that history frequently explains what we find behind the plaster later, and it is useful to have before design starts.
Where does verification stop and judgment begin?
Registration, bond and insurance are pass or fail. Every firm on your list either clears them or comes off the list. What none of them tell you is how the work will be designed, how the project will be run, or what it will actually cost when it is finished. That is the part you have to evaluate yourself — through the finished work you can go stand in, through reading reviews for behavior rather than star ratings, and through how a firm answers direct questions about its process. It is the last stage of narrowing a shortlist down to one firm, and it is where the real difference between companies shows up.
For our part, we are registered, bonded and insured in Washington, we will hand you our registration number and a certificate of insurance on request, and we would rather you check than take our word for it. We have been building in Seattle for twenty years, and the record is part of who we are. The other half of what we do — designing your project completely and then pricing it as one fixed number before construction begins — is the part you can only judge by talking to us.
Run the lookup on us, then bring us your house. A design consultation with NOR Design & Construction will show you how we plan, how we price, and what the paperwork behind it looks like. Book one when you have finished your due diligence, or call 206.979.3420 with a question first — we are happy to answer it.
